You and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

You awaken, aching in certain or possibly most of your joints because you dared to live your life the previous day. Silly goose that you are, you thought you could do a load of laundry, go to the grocery store, and still have body enough to go out for dinner with a friend. What were you thinking?

You forgot to pick up your pain pills and have to drag your aching carcass to the pharmacy to pick them up — therefore, you have to get dressed; although they do have a drive-through window and just maybe no one would notice if you wore your robe. Then your mother’s phrase echoes in your head. You know, the one she always used about wearing clean underwear: “What if you got in an accident and had to be taken to the hospital?” This causes visions to arise as you’re loaded onto a gurney in your rattiest, stained bathrobe therefore you revise your plan; you substitute your old baggy jeans and T-shirt for the bathrobe. Oh, Jeez, what is that on the shirt? Is that chocolate ice cream? You hope it is, because you’re not going to take it off.

As you’re looking under the bed for your shoes you find you have to sit on the floor and can’t get back up. Is it your knees or your hip? Does it matter as you do your best spider crawl and heft your rear-end into the air grabbing the bedpost. Ah ha, shoes are found and socks are forgotten, then you have to find your car keys. You’re sure your husband took them by mistake until you jingle all the pockets of every jacket you own and hear the comforting sound of metal keys. This is all happening in the first hour of your day. Is it a forewarning of what’s to come?

While on the way to the pharmacy you run your tongue over your teeth and realize you forgot to brush your teeth or wash your face. Did you brush your hair? You can’t remember. Does it matter when everything hurts so much? Probably not.

When you reach the drive-through, the usually kind girl is having trouble with the window opening and bangs the side of your car. “What are you talking about? The doctor didn’t fax over your refill.” You know you’ll have to come back later in the day and limp through the morning. You grouse, growl, and complain to yourself all the way home.

When you walk back into the house, without pain pills in hand, you find you forgot to put the dog out and she’s left a brown message for you in the hallway, which would have not been a big deal if you hadn’t stepped in it. Unfortunately, you did, and as you’re reproaching her and putting her out you’re struggling to control the damage and hop on one foot. You forgot you can no longer hop. What were you thinking? Now you’re hurting more than ever. You also have a shoe to wash.

Did you remember to take your daily pills before you left the house? You can’t recall. It’s a good thing you have a daily pill dispenser and as you check it; you begin to have serious doubts about whether or not all of your mental faculties are intact. You decide they are not. If you took your pills, you have to grab something to eat. Those medications can’t sit in an empty stomach or you’ll have another bout of gut trouble.

Don’t you have enough going on already? A piece of toast would do the trick. Oh dear, is that mold on the bread? Surely, this bread wasn’t blue when you bought it. No, of course you can’t eat it anyway.

You’ve only been up for an hour and it’s beginning to look like another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day as you look around you. There’s something about leaving the house and returning that forces you to see that stack of mail and bills on the dining room table and the sticky counter in the kitchen, and makes you wonder what is in the overflowing trash can that’s sending out that odor? You decide you can’t possibly face any of your life until you’ve taken the daily pills you hope you took, so you sit down in a chair, or better yet, crawl back into bed, accompanied by a hot cup of ginger tea and an almost past-due carton of yogurt. Where’s the spoon? Oh heck, isn’t that why God gave us fingers? You can eat a carton of yogurt with your finger. It’s so much easier than walking all the way to the kitchen to get a clean spoon. You reach for the remote control and turn on the news, where you are met by death, destruction, terrorism, and the lies of politicians. Surely there’s an old movie on, and somewhere life is merry and will allow you a respite from your aching, painful, throbbing body.

Well, so much for your morning, do you want to hear about mine? And I won’t even bother telling you about the rest of the day.

(Kudos belong to writer Judith Viorst for stringing together that sentence in the title of her book Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sue Falkner-Wood

Sue Falkner-Wood is a retired registered nurse living in Astoria, Ore., with her husband, who is also an R.N. Sue left nursing in 1990 due to chronic pain and other symptoms related to what was eventually...read more